Among Russia’s Twitter trolls, Senator Warren’s a favorite target

Donald Trump is not the only American politician with a big following in Russia.
I’ve been searching the 2017 tweets, about a million in all, and the experience has left me more convinced than ever that reading Twitter is largely a waste of time.
I found about 700 tweets mentioning his full name, compared to the 560 that came up when I typed “Elizabeth Warren.” Then again, Warren gets another 400 mentions if you search under “Pocahontas,” Trump’s nasty nickname for the senator.
One account, “covfefenationUS,” which had about 2,500 followers, pumped out more than 250 anti-Warren messages in the month of November alone, most of them calling her “an awful senator” and “racist fraud,” while other messages refer to her as a “liberal whack job” or “a fake and a hack.” Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, an independent, is denounced as “a commie,” a “conman” and “a complete idiot.” These messages read more like Joe Sixpack than Boris Badenov.
How do we know they really came from Russia?
Because Twitter says so.
Linvill and Warren (no relation to the senator) sorted the Twitter accounts into several categories, including more than 600 trolls who sent messages seeking to build up Trump and other right-wing politicians, and 230 who talked up left-wing causes.
And I found about 100 tweets praising Bernie Sanders for standing up for veterans and against big pharmaceutical companies.
to make sure everybody is talking about the information you stole,” Francois said.
“What they’re doing at the end of the day,” Francois said, “is to increase division.” So it doesn’t matter to the Russian trolls whether Elizabeth Warren retains her Senate seat in the November election.

Donald Trump is not the only American politician with a big following in Russia. Massachusetts’ own Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren is also a favorite in St. Petersburg — but for all the wrong reasons.

It turns out that Warren is a popular target of Russian Twitter trolls, who cranked out hundreds of hostile messages about her last year. A handful of others sing her praises.

All this emerges from a treasure trove of trash talk generated by the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed outfit in St. Petersburg that tampered with US elections by remote control. Three million of these Russian tweets, transmitted between mid-June of 2015 and May 2018, were captured by researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina, who organized and released them for wider reading.

I’ve been searching the 2017 tweets, about a million in all, and the experience has left me more convinced than ever that reading Twitter is largely a waste of time. But it has also convinced me that no amount of technology can neutralize this sort of political sabotage.

Warren, who declined to comment on the matter, isn’t the only New England politician to earn the wrath of the Russians. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders got hit hard, too. I found about 700 tweets mentioning his full name, compared to the 560 that came up when I typed “Elizabeth Warren.” Then again, Warren gets another 400 mentions if you search under “Pocahontas,” Trump’s nasty nickname for the senator.

One account, “covfefenationUS,” which had about 2,500 followers, pumped out more than 250 anti-Warren messages in the month of November alone, most of them calling her “an awful senator” and “racist fraud,” while other messages refer to her as a “liberal whack job” or “a fake and a hack.”

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, an independent, is denounced as “a commie,” a “conman” and “a complete idiot.”

These messages read more like Joe Sixpack than Boris Badenov. How do we know they really came from Russia? Because Twitter says so. The company spent months looking for clues, like the digital…

Our Network of Sites

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our network of sites.

You have Successfully Subscribed!

We respect your privacy. You can opt-out anytime.

About Us

Finding a single source of news on niche topics can be time consuming – until now. The ContentQube Network uses “smart” technology to curate content trending on social media and search based on keywords and categories. Our content discovery engine helps readers stay updated on the latest trends, and introduces them to new publishers daily. We are a referrer to some of the biggest names in the business.

Disclaimer: All the content aggregated is for informational purposes only. The content is owned by the third parties sourced within each article, unless otherwise noted. Attribution and links to the original source are included in each article. OneQube is not responsible for the accuracy of aforementioned content. If you are the publisher of any of this content and are not interested in the referral traffic, contact us and we will remove the article within 24 hours.